A single board computer or other controller typically communicates with various peripheral devices through an interface device connected through a backplane or a bus, which may be a serial or parallel implementation. Most backplanes include a number of slots or connectors into which a circuit board is physically plugged. Each circuit board is in turn associated with one or more peripheral devices. A circuit board is either physically configured with jumpers and switches or contains firmware that may be configured using software instructions received from the single board computer through the backplane or bus.
Once configured, an interface device typically requires a software driver located in the single board computer, which allows the computer's operating system to communicate with and control the interface device. The interface device in turn interfaces with and controls the peripheral device. At times, the addition or change of a peripheral device will require a new interface device which would then typically require a new device driver to be installed before the peripheral device and interface device can be operated by the single board computer.
Conventionally, computing device with a robust level of intelligence is usually required to communicate with each interface device. This allows data to be received, stored, transmitted, and appropriately formatted for transmission to and from the appropriate destinations via a backplane or bus. Commonly such functions were conducted by processors or controllers with data formatting capability that allowed communication of command/response logic instructions that were created by a complex computer program. The program was then compiled and linked to a board support package library function.
For highly sophisticated applications such as for avionics, the controller may be required to be inspected and its conditional logic certified to be error free. Any time there is a new interface device function a new microprocessor control program must be created, debugged, and certified. This makes installing upgrades and executing reconfigurations costly and time consuming. Hence, there is a need for a computing model that emulates the performance of a conventional controller, but without the required installation of new drivers when new interface devices are introduced.